“Every meaningful choice requires us to foreclose on other possible futures. No decision preserves all possible outcomes. Eventually, you must choose, and choosing will always come at a cost.” -Kate Bowler
Today is day 32 of exploring this prompt: What if it all works out? ❤️
- This week I will continue to reread, Welcome Home: A Guide to Building a Home for Your Soul by Najwa Zebian: “Are your ready? Let’s start constructing the road to home.”
- Braveheart, [we see what we seek].
- As I devote time and attention to this topic, I continually come across additional resources and content to support me in this endeavor.
- Example: a very dear friend recommending this book. 📙 (Notes below …)
- The guide words for March are also providing me with insight.
- As I devote time and attention to this topic, I continually come across additional resources and content to support me in this endeavor.
“[Factual storytelling is] when you spill the details of what happened without any connection to the emotion attached to it or to the impact that it had or has on you. [It] is a type of invulnerability, a way of protecting yourself from what you believe is too much to feel and be present with.” -Vienna Pharaon
- Healing ❤️🩹 begins with identifying the backstory of our interpretation of our worth.
- Chapters of a story that started being written when we were young children, and chronicled internally and meticulously. The body remembers.
- Until we begin to 🙏🔎 decipher our backstories, we live through repeated 🚫 self-sabotage that exacerbates our feelings of unworthiness. 🥺
Moving beyond [factual storytelling] to pivot toward new behaviors, different choices and (eventual) healing, begins with naming what was and is, and acknowledging our wounds.
This step of factual storytelling has taken a while for me, but during the past few years it has been accelerated by art therapy, relational situations + realizations that occurred after my mother’s passing.
“To be witnessed is one of the most profound experiences of a lifetime….[it] can change the trajectory of your life, quite literally.” -Vienna Pharaon
After my mother’s passing I was able to witness new details of my story: “seeing it, feeling it, connecting to it, and experiencing it firsthand” (Vienna Pharaon) … in many ways it was the first time I could see it all clearly. (I also had the kind witness of my partner, my adult children and dear friends to help me through.) ❤️
- There were some intense reality checks as I faced “the facts” of my backstories.
- Facts that proved to be doorways for me to walk through, to move beyond my pain and circular conversations that never resulted in reconciliation (only more pain and repeated verbal assaults).
- Facts that also led to a lot of what-iffing and if-onlys (regret) regarding my inability to see (acknowledge) what was happening at the time.
“[Regret] is often a delusion of control.” -Kate Bowler
- Facts that seemed so obvious 👀 (hindsight is always 20/20).
- Facts that led to feeling foolish for not making different choices much sooner … 🥺
- “Regret loves this story. It gives the illusion that the future was readable and I failed to interpret it correctly. … But regret is often a delusion of control. [And] hindsight is not a moral achievement. It is just… what comes later.” –Kate Bowler
“We keep telling [the stories] because, somewhere deep down, we are still hoping for a witness. Or a reckoning. Or at the very least, a sentence that begins with: ‘You’re not wrong. That shouldn’t have happened.'” -Kate Bowler
- Thematic 100-day practices are the ideal time to recalibrate, to process, to recover as sense of identity while slow journaling. To pay attention + make connections.
- I am learning practical steps to healing within the theme of my current 100-days practice.
- Example: [stress imprints] “unfinished stress responses stored in the body and nervous system because the body doesn’t have the safety, capacity, or support needed to complete it” (Kate Connolly).
Braveheart, how are you? How are you coping and evolving? What are you giving your time and energies to? What has your attention?
🗓️ For March, the themes for Ko-fi resources are [attention] and [100-days]—because it is always nice to have options. 💁🏻♀️ And just for fun, I added in some 🌈 rainbow ✂️📏🔖 art prompts and quotations.
- For 2026, I am focused on weekly and monthly reviews as a way to remind myself of the sequences, resources, themes and prompts that foster my practice.
- March download
- March-April lunar download topic: “future versions of ourselves”
Thank you kindly for your presence here, Braveheart. 💗
I appreciate your interest and support.
~love & good wishes~
